MILAN, March 26 (Class Editori) -- The Italian managers responsible of important brands on the Chinese market are equipping themselves in order to cope with the market recovery, after the drop in consumption recorded in the last two months, which amounted at 37 percent, an average rate if compared to the decrease in the catering sector, car sales (-82 percent in February) and luxury products.
With some exceptions. One of these is represented by the group based in Veneto, which belongs to Renzo Rosso: OTB, Only the brave. The company, which is active in China, has not recorded a fall in sales, also thanks to the digital sector; as far as its expansion is concerned, a postponement of the projects has been decided.
The group, which employs 600 direct employees based between Shanghai and Hong Kong, did not reduce the workforce and has not frozen recruitment at the moment. Only stores inside malls have been closed, because other stores have only reduced the opening hours. Offices have remained open with work shifts in each department.
"We had a dozen of store openings and relocations in program, dedicated to the group brands, which had to take place between March and April and we only decided to postpone them between May and June, whilst the less strategic ones have been totally deleted. The plan is a continuation of the 20 openings occurred in the second semester of 2019," Giovanni Pungetti, CEO of OTB Greater China has explained to MF Fashion.
"In the last three weeks, we have recorded an average increase in sales by 80 percent for Diesel and Marni, after the strong fall of February. These are the two brands of the group with the highest number of stores located in the region. The comeback to normal in terms of deliveries has also supported the online business, which had more than doubled in 2019 for OTB Greater China", the manager has declared.
"In order to face the emergency, the communications on Wechat among the store staff and the consumers have been increased: in the last four weeks, the sales recorded through the app have accounted for more than 50 percent of the total amount, reaching 80 percent peaks in the Northern regions. Online training, visual merchandising and remote store monitoring sessions have also been organized, with the on-site staff in the space which illustrates the operations to the team through the virtual reality. There have also been product presentations in live broadcast addressed to all the most loyal consumers: in the first weekend the sales have increased by 85 percent compared with the previous one" as Pungetti has explained again; according to him, China is slowly getting back to a new normality, even if Hong Kong is still going through strong difficulties. "Almost all the offices and the productive activities are resuming. Schools are still closed and a definitive date of reopening has not been announced yet. Outside of urban centres, transfers are still forbidden. Opening times are still reduced in shops and restaurants, but people will be back to do shopping, it is only important to understand when, in order to resume investments too," he concluded.
Even though it is early to talk about a return to normal life, after two months of stalemate to handle the coronavirus emergency in China, a slight trend of improvement is starting to be perceived at Maserati. "Now, the difficult part is understanding which will be the customers' behaviour", as the managing director- Mirko Bordiga- has explained. He is responsible for the activity of the historical luxury automotive house in the Asian country, one of its main markets globally. Founded in August 2004, in Shanghai, Maserati China delivers and imports the vehicles of the company from Modena through its network of over 60 distributed dealers and relies on about 100 employees.
"In fact, local authorities have forbidden all the retailing until the end of February. In our offices in Shanghai, we adopted smart working for the whole month and only in March we have started to come back to the office, even if fully respecting the directives of our district. Now, we are still working with two daily shifts", as the manager has added, "in order to manage the emergency, we have implemented some supporting measures for our network of dealers, whose cash flow has been seriously affected and the normal operability has practically disappeared".
"All the marketing and communications activities have been moved online, and TikTok has become one of the main promotion platforms of Maserati cars in the country. Operability and communication have been provided by platforms like Wechat, which, during the last two months, have make a leap in quality to support the business part of the companies", as Bordiga has concluded.
(Source:Class Editori)
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